A century of stainless steel

Steph Millard of the exhibitions team at The Science Museum looks back over 100 years of stainless steel, first cast in August 1913 by Harry Brearley 

An early stainless steel knife made by Butler of Sheffield, c. 1915. © Science Museum/SSPL

Today’s journey into work sets me thinking. Stuck behind a queue of cars with their stainless steel exhaust systems I repeatedly glance at my wristwatch – with its stainless steel back – to check I won’t be late. To my right, the Canary Wharf tower – with its 370,000 square feet of stainless steel cladding – glints majestically in the early morning sunshine.

Stainless steel impacts on our lives in so many different ways. But what exactly is it and who invented it? One hundred and one years ago, in August 1913, an Englishman named Harry Brearley reported that he had cast an ingot of low-carbon steel that could resist attack from a variety of acids including lemon juice and vinegar. He called it ‘rustless steel’.

At the time, Brearley had been helping an arms manufacturer overcome the problem of gun barrel erosion caused by the release of gases when the weapon is fired. His genius lay in the fact that he could foresee the commercial application of his new material within the cutlery industry. After initial scepticism, manufacturers in his home town of Sheffield were also able to recognise the potential.

The essential ingredient of any stainless steel is chromium, which combines with oxygen in the air to form a strong, invisible film – a protective coating on the surface of the metal that continually self-repairs whenever scratched or grazed. But Brearley was by no means the first person to investigate the addition of chromium to steel. In the century before his discovery metallurgists from across Europe and North America were also experimenting with iron-chromium alloys.

Since then stainless steel – in all its various forms – has gone on to find a home in the widest range of applications, as a walk around the Science Museum’s galleries will testify. Within our Challenge of Materials gallery visitors can admire a wedding dress made of stainless steel wire – the brainchild of British designer Jeff Banks – while in the Exploring Space gallery our J2 rocket engine can remind us that between 1967 and 1973 NASA used stainless steel in all 13 of its Saturn V rockets.

Smaller, but equally intriguing, is the stainless steel dropper on display in The Science and Art of Medicine gallery, which instils oils through the nose as part of an Ayurvedic detox therapy to cure head ailments, such as migraine and sinusitis.

As we celebrate Brearley’s role in the history of metallurgy why not come along to the Science Museum and see how many different examples of stainless steel you can discover?

This article was taken from The Science Museum's blog.

You can discover more tales of British workmanship and industry in the current iPad issue and inaugural print edition of Ernest Journal, on sale now.

The beauty of rubbish

What does one month of rubbish from one institution look like? This is a question the Science Museum are striving to answer in their unique exhibition discovering the beauty, value and volume of rubbish

Images: Katherine Leedale

Thirty days' worth of rubbish. Doesn't sound like a lot does it? But consider 30 days of rubbish discarded by a thriving museum and you'll soon realise that's a heck of a lot of bin bags. But the Science Museum aren't afraid of confronting their wastage and have been bold enough to members of the public rifle through it and help transform it into a beautiful exhibition entitled The Rubbish Collection, led by artist Joshua Sofaer. 

The exhibition happens in two phases. During the first phase, which began 16 June, members of the public were invited to participate in the collection, sorting and documenting of one month’s worth of rubbish generated by the Science Museum’s visitors, staff, contractors and exhibition projects to create a growing visual archive of the things they throw away (even £40 in lost pennies) from day to day. During this first phase, rubbish was diverted through a dedicated exhibition space, photographed by Sofaer and his team of volunteers, before continuing on its usual journey to be processed for recycling or used to generate electricity. 

For the second phase, currently exhibiting, Sofaer invites the rubbish back into the museum at different stages of processing for an eight-week exhibition examining the value of what we throw away in relation to what we keep.

With a focus on sustainability and reuse, The Rubbish Collection confronts the materiality of rubbish and highlights that the things we throw away do not disappear but are transformed. The exhibition invites visitors to reappraise their relationship with rubbish, while raising questions about ‘better’ or ‘worse’ ways of treating waste.

Artist Joshua Sofaer said: "Museums generally display items that have some special status, that are rare, or valuable. But in this project, I want to give the 'museum treatment' to the stuff it would normally throw away."

Images: Katherine Leedale

The Rubbish Collection is currently on exhibit at The Science Museum until 14 September.

For more unique innovations in turning rubbish into things of beauty, read about artist Jason Taylor who finds wonder in the mundane during his challenge to make a new item every day for a year, in iPad issue 3. 

Spoonerism

Eating and cooking with a wooden spoon pleases Ernest for many reasons 

We hate modern spoons. Once, we had a spoon bend when it hit the surface of a cup of tea. True story.

Now, what Hatchet & Bear have done, and how we love them for it, is create a selection of spoons and spatulas that have been hand hewn from locally gathered wood. If you read Ernest, then like us you don’t want your utensils manufactured. You want them hewn.

Made by woodworker EJ Osborne, using simple tools and traditional methods, these spoons and spatulas are brilliant for everyday use, as well as making you feel like a Viking while you eat your cornflakes. 

Spoons/spatulas, Hatchet & Bear, £12 to £40, hatchetandbear.co.uk

Extract from Inventory in iPad issue 3. Download the issue now!

Last of the oak tanners

Salted hides, oak bark liquor and pails of fish grease: tanning leather in East Devon is a craft that has been titillating the senses since the days before the Romans

Images: Jesse Wild

Hamlet: “ How long will a man lie i’the earth ere he rot?” 
First Clown: “He will last some eight years, or nine a tanner.”
Hamlet: “Why he more than another?”
First Clown: “Why Sir, His hide is so tanned with his trade that he will keep out water a great while.” Hamlet, by William Shakespeare 

Bushcraft instructor and presenter of ITV Wales' Coast and Country Andrew Price has had a lifelong fascination for the ancient craft of leather and was particularly keen to visit a tannery in Devon, who have been tanning hides using oak bark for centuries.

There has been a tannery at the same location in Colyton since before the Romans arrived and the basic processes and techniques used today have changed little over the years. Tanneries are always situated close to a source of water, as well as the other raw materials, namely ox hides and oak bark.

The clean, de-haired hides are taken to the tan yard, which has a series of 72 square pits, known as latches, filled with tanning liquor made by soaking oak bark in water until the tannins leach out. 

Over a period of three months the hides are soaked in 12 progressively stronger liquor solutions. Once they’ve completed this cycle, they are moved into a further series of pits where they are layered flat in the solution with oak bark chips sandwiched between them. This gives the hides the most intense concentration of tanning, and they will stay in these pits for a further nine months, making a total of 12 months in the tanning solution.

You can discover more about this age-old craft in iPad issue 3 of Ernest Journal, on sale now.

Living small

During a cross-Canada trek Steph Wetherell stumbled upon a community of people who have built their own tiny homes. What are the advantages of living small?

A few years ago, if you’d asked me if I could live in a 200ft-square house, I’d most likely have laughed at you, picturing the Everest-sized mountain of belongings that I’d accumulated over the years. But after decluttering my life and downsizing to a rucksack for a cross-Canada adventure, I discovered a community of ‘tiny home’ dwellers on a small island off the coast of British Columbia and fell in love with the idea of a different way of living.

Their beautiful wooden homes are built on trailer bases to allow them to be moved place to place; think caravan, but handcrafted and individually designed. Tiny home life comes with no mortgage, no foundations and no commitment to staying in one place. But what’s it actually like to live in such a small house, and why exactly do you need a hammock above your bed?

Max & Heidi

The first tiny home dwellers to open the doors of their micro-house to me were Max and Heidi, who have been living in their quirky 200ft-square house for just over two years. They built the whole thing themselves (albeit with a little help from their friends) for around £700, and every nook and cranny echoes their eccentric personalities. The fact that it ended up being a little shorter and a touch taller than they expected makes sense when you’ve spent more than five minutes with Max.

And the hammock strung above the bed to dry nettles, toy figures balanced on wall boards, and the homemade cider stashed behind the loft ladder seem perfectly natural when you’ve seen Heidi’s creative side in action.

I chatted to them while they worked in the garden, clearing land to plant their season’s worth of vegetables; our conversation punctuated with the rhythmic sound of shovelling. From my seat (a handy tree stump), I was captivated by thehandcrafted exterior of their house, each section built from different materials that Max salvaged from other projects and places on the island. “The more you can take someone’s trash and turn it into your basic living requirements, the lighter you’re living on the Earth,” he said.

When I asked what was hard about living in such a small house, Max paused, leaning on his rake for a moment before answering solemnly, “Having dance parties.” Heidi laughed, agreeing. “So true. There’s really only enough room for a solo dancer.” In a brief moment of seriousness, they admitted space and storage does pose a challenge for them as they grow or forage much of their food. But this is a challenge they appear to relish as their tales of 200 squashes above the bed and tomato plants hanging in the living room indicate. 

“I think that this fall was the first time either of us said ‘Gee, it might have been nice to make the house four feet longer’,” Max admitted. “But we’re happy in here. Everything works for us. And it’s still evolving.” Heidi agreed, concluding, “I love that it really reflects us and our personalities. Maybe that’s easy to do on a small scale.”

Steph Wetherell is a travelling farmhand, writer and photographer, currently living in the beautiful mountains of British Columbia.

See more of these unique spaces in iPad issue 3 of Ernest Journal, available to download now.